To stoke creativity, crank out ideas and then step away

There is an effective formula for unlocking employees’ creative potential, according to new research. Employers should incentivize workers to produce an abundance of ideas – even mediocre ones – and then have them step away from the project for an “incubation period.”

The researchers found that people who were rewarded simply for churning out ideas, whether good or bad, ultimately ended up producing more creative ideas than people who did not receive cash incentives or those whose incentives were based on the quality of their ideas instead of the quantity. All the study participants stepped away from the initial task for a time and returned to it later.

What the researchers say: “Creativity is not instantaneous, but if incentives promote enough ideas as seeds for thought, creativity eventually emerges,”said the co-author of the study in the Accounting Review.

It has been well established in academic literature that creative performance is enhanced by an incubation period, but this research looked at a new question: What happens when you add incentives for idea generation to the equation?

The researchers conducted two experiments. In the first, they asked study participants to create rebus puzzles—riddles where words, phrases or sayings are represented using a combination of images and letters.

Some participants were offered money based on the number of ideas they generated, some only for ideas that met a standard for creativity, and others a fixed amount regardless of the quantity or quality of their puzzle ideas.

Initially, none of the incentivized groups outperformed the fixed-wage group in measures of creativity, as judged by an independent panel. Creativity incentives, it would seem, do not work instantly. But in a subsequent return to the creativity task 10 days later, those who had originally been paid to come up with as many ideas as they could had “a distinct creativity advantage,” outperforming the other groups in both the quantity and quality of ideas, the researchers said.

Having an incubation period after participants put their minds to work was key to their success, they added. Combining mass idea generation with a rest period results in much more creative productivity than when either of the two strategies is used in isolation.

How much time is needed? That’s the question the researchers tackled in a second experiment, paying half the participants a fixed amount and half for the number of ideas they produced. As before, the pay-for-quantity participants yielded more, but not better, initial ideas than the fixed-pay group.

But after researchers led participants on a quiet, 20-minute walk around campus, the pay-for-quantity group once again produced more and better puzzles.

“You need to rest, take a break and detach yourself—even if that detachment is just 20 minutes,” said the lead researcher. “The recipe for creativity is try—and get frustrated because it’s not going to happen. Relax, sit back, and then it happens.”

So, what? I find that this works for me and is something that I have always done. Another trick that I find very useful both to relax and to get the creative juices flowing is to get up and walk for 15 minutes or so and repeat a chant I learned while living with hunter-gatherers for a year. It goes like this:

Bonekeke falabaa (With the members of my tribe)
(click) tokemetaan Izeeta (I am never alone)
Yo tefawa eh (We together are the all.)
Yo tefawa eh. Hἐ! (We together are the all. Yes!)

No doubt you’ll have your own. But the exercise and the chant clear the head most wonderfully and you become hyper-engaged and creative.